The festival was awarded 4 full pages in the September 2009 issue of the infamous British publication, Metal Hammer, and in just three years has grown to international fame with various artists, journalists and managers alike expressing their support.

Unirock Festival 2011 will be once again held at Macka Kucukciftlik Park, a 10,000 capacity open air venue located in the heart of Istanbul, literally within 15-20 minutes walking distance of most major tourist attractions as well as Taksim area, the center of Istanbul nightlife. Istanbul also offers numerous accomodation options from affordable youth hostels to 5-star hotels. This means you may combine a wonderful Istanbul holiday with the festival experience. Here is our suggestion for the weekend, wake up early, visit the magnificent historical sites of Istanbul, come to the festival site at around 5 p.m., watch your favorite bands till 11.00 pm, and then attend our official after parties to be held at Istanbul's heavy metal club Dorock each night.

We have two different 3-day ticket options. Regular 3-day ticket or VIP front-of-stage ticket. VIP front-of-stage ticket gives you the right to watch all live performances in a special front of stage area as well as a free festival t-shirt. A limited number of discounted tickets are on sale at Eventbrite.com. Eventbrite is a Paypal based global ticketing company and in order to buy a ticket, all you have to do is to establish a Paypal account if you don't already have one. Sent to your email inbox in e-ticket format (PDF file), simply get a print out of your e-ticket and come to the festival site. Each ticket bears a unique barcode which will be scanned by a dedicated Iphone scanner application at the entrance of the festival.

The price of a a large beer (50 cl) is aprox 2.5 euros at the festival site. You may also check live performance videos on Youtube shot during past Unirock Festivals.

I may be getting ahead of myself here, but i'm expecting Anathema to be confirmed.

They are playing here in Dubai on 8th September and i can't imagine they would come all this way just for this show. I'm glad my flight to Turkey is on the morning of the 9th, so either way i'll see them again at least once this Summer

Quoted from Opeth official page : "It is with great regret that Opeth are forced to cancel their September 10th appearance at the UniRock Festival in Istanbul, Turkey. Due to a conflict with the festival´s promoter who were not able to fulfil their contractual obligations, our agent and management decided to pull out as we can´t afford to risk financial loss.
We hereby apologize to any fans who were expecting us to appear and we´ll do our absolute best to schedule a new tour date for Turkey in the near future."

HammerFall's first performance in Turkey was supposed to happen this Friday, at Uni Rock Open Air. It's now Wednesday evening, and the band's representatives still haven't received flight tickets nor any deposit payments for the appearance. Therefore, and most unfortunately, HammerFall is forced to cancel the performance at Uni Rock Open Air 2011.

"We've been wanting to come to Turkey for a long, long time, and this is just so sad. But without flight tickets, it's not so easy to get to the gig", says basist Fredrik Larsson, "and these things are beyond our control this time". Guitarist Oscar Dronjak continues: "The plan was to end the festival season on a high note, and then refocus on the upcoming European Outbreak tour beginning at the end of October. Instead, we end in the worst possible way: with a cancelled show. It sucks ass."

"We're very sorry for any inconvenience this may have cause for you, the Turkish fans, we had longed to play for you! But we promise to be back sometime next year, that's for damn sure", punctuates singer Joacim, "so keep your flame burning until we get there!"

"With regret we have to announce that we will not appear at Istanbul's Unirock Open Air this coming Sunday. The promoter has broken his contract with us (and, obviously, other bands, namely Opeth, Katatonia, and Hammerfall) and is currently not replying to any of our attempts to contact him. He has also failed to book flights for the band. Therefore there's nothing we can do but to assure you that this news is as sad for us as it is for our turkish fans. We have been looking forward to this show for months and we'll do all we can to find a replacement for it next year and as soon as possible!"